Crimean Tatar embroidery, and family memories

Earlier this month I visited a Crimean Tatar school in Sari Bash, a small village of about 1,000 people in north-central Crimea.  My Crimean Tatar teacher had taken me to the village with her family, as her husband grew up there.  As they hadn't had a chance to visit the village in a while, everyone was quite glad to see them.  This was quite lucky for me - after the school visit we were all invited to dinner at the home of one of the school's senior teachers.  

After dinner, the teacher showed me her collection of family heirlooms- Korans, weavings and traditional embroidery.  They were so beautiful and precious, and it is still difficult to think about the long life of these items - she told me that they had belonged to her grandmother and possibly her great-grandmother.  While I didn't ask her, I imagine that these were among the few things her family took with them on the day they were deported in 1944.  Almost half of the population did not survive the deportation, but these items travelled to Central Asia and back again.  The family encouraged me to take pictures, and said they wanted me to share these relics of Crimean Tatar culture with my friends and family in America.  And of course I am honored to share them with you.  If you email me, I can send you a few more.

Traditional Crimean Tatar embroidery

From left to right - the family's Koran, a small prayer pouch, a newer Koran brought from Turkey, a second prayer pouch, a traditional pouch for tobacco.

I wish I had taken more pictures to show the detail of the gold stitching of the pouches and the designs of the embroidery.  

If you'd like to see more, The International Committee for Crimea, an American Crimean Tatar diaspora group, recently posted a beautiful collection of embroidery on Flickr, which can be found here.  

Photo from "A Study in Crimean Tatar Embroidery:  The Asiye-Zeynep Collection"

Aside from the unique designs and colors, Crimean Tatar embroidery is well-known for being double-sided.  Yes, those meticulous designs are just as beautiful on either side.

After the visit, I sent some of these pictures to a few friends and family members, along with some thoughts I had that day.  It was quite moving to see such family heirlooms, and I doubted if anything of the sort had survived in my family.   My grandfather (DeLuca) responded:

As to the handcraft you show in the pictures, they reminded me of my mother. When I was a kid we would sit in the darken living room and listen the radio. My mother would knit and crochet doilies, bed spreads, sweaters, socks. I recall asking her why and how did she manage to do them in the dark, only with an occasional turning on of the light?

She told me when she was a young girl back in  Italy on the farm, at night, only with the light of the fireplace, she, her sisters and her mother would all knit or crochet by the fireplace. 

She had a chest full of bedspreads plus other handicrafts. I just asked your grandmother if there are any bedspreads around. She doesn't think so but said there are some bureau scarfs.

I had notice in some of your earlier photos, the lace work and scarfs. Brought back memories of my youth.

My grandmother then found these crocheted works he was writing about, and sent me a picture:

I look forward to telling the family in Sari Bash that by learning about their family heirlooms, I also learned a bit more about my own.

Simferopol patterns

Dad - I shot this one for you - the stencil says "Caution - mean dog!"

Bahar geldi!

This weekend the weather in Simferopol was beautiful and I had a great time walking around and hanging out with some new friends.

On Saturday morning I set out to the outdoor book market.  On the way there I passed these adorable little strays waiting outside of a shop.

It didn't take me too long to figure out what they were waiting for.  Looks like these fellas have a long time friend in the neighbourhood.

Must post this picture as well so you can see the honey stand.

And she's a cat person too.

At the market, I picked up some great finds, including old travel guides of Simferopol, Karaim cookbooks, a great present for Heidi that is also a secret, a collection of short stories by Babel since Melissa is always raving about him, and a few atlases.

Don't be fooled by everyone in coats and hats - the weather was beautiful...

...as you can see from this woman hanging out in her window.

Latin or Cyrillic?

     Just this week, a group of linguists in Simferopol recommended that Crimean Tatar formally switch to the Latin alphabet, and that the Crimean Tatar World Congress approve the switch.  The meeting was called by the Secretary General of the Union of Black Sea Universities, who lives in Romania.  The news item has popped up on a few sources, with some declaring that Crimean Tatar has indeed changed to the Latin script.  I don't think that is the case, although this does seem to be another step in this direction of Latinization.  But it does raise a question many have asked me - what alphabet does Crimean Tatar use?  For today, the answer is Cyrillic.  And Latin.

Unity in thought, language and action! I. Gasprinkski

Qırımtatar dili  - political, cultural and linguistic changes

     Like many of the languages in this area of the world, Crimean Tatar has undergone many changes over the past hundred years.  A relationship with a variety of powers and trends is one major factor in these changes:  Islamisation, the Crimean Khanate, the relationship with the Ottoman Empire, the Russian Empire, Soviet rule, and post-independence Ukraine.  The deportation and 50 year exile in Central Asia was another major influence on the language - at the same time that families and communities were tragically separated, Crimean Tatar became a language of the home and lost the functions of a literary and official language.  Compounding this is the fact that many Crimean Tatars speak dialects differing to varying degrees from the literary Crimean Tatar language.  Since Crimean Tatars began to return to the Crimean Peninsula in the late '80s, there has been a strong desire to revive the Crimean Tatar language, and linguists, writers, academics, schools, communities and families have made a concerted effort to develop Crimean Tatar not only as an official language of Crimea, a status it now holds, but a living and developing language with a strong presence on the continent.  

     Writing about all of these changes is too difficult and grand a task for me, but in this post I would like to talk about one of the most obvious changes:  the alphabet used to write the language.

Three scripts in less than 30 years

     From Islamization until the beginning of the 20th century, Crimean Tatar was written in the Arabic script.  After the revolution, the language was changed to use the Latin alphabet, or the Uniform Turkic Alphabet - no language in the Soviet Union remained written in Arabic script.  Here is an example of both side by side, taken from this newspaper article (RUS):

A short time later, from the late 30s to the early 40s depending on who is counting, Crimean Tatar became a language written with the Cyrillic alphabet.  This means that during this time there were Crimean Tatars who had to learn how to read their language three times.  Can you imagine?

A cover of a 1986 trilingual children's book in Crimean Tatar, Uzbek and Russian. In Russian the title is :  "Animals, birds and insects."  The Crimean Tatar title is "What animals say."

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, many former Soviet states have begun switching their alphabets from the Cyrillic to Latin script.  One example here is Uzbek.  As I've been waiting for an excuse to post this, as an example here is a picture of two bilingual Uzbek-Russian signs I saw in a marshrutka in Simferopol. The Uzbek is above the Russian and is written with the Latin alphabet.

Crimean Tatar schools and educational materials

Language is a hot issue on many fronts in Ukraine.  Much like the infamous Ukrainian/Russian/Surzhuk question, I can't help but ask people their opinion about the script of the Crimean Tatar language.  Do you think it should be in Cyrillic or in Latin script?  Do you think it will change to Latin script in the future?  When?  How?  By whom?  Most people I ask tell me they think a switch to the Latin alphabet is inevitable.  Moving away from Cyrililc could be interpreted as a part of this post-Soviet trend towards independence and nationalization, but also a way to unite with other Turkic-speaking nations.

In one of the 16 Crimean Tatar schools in Crimea, I found that some of their signs were already written in the Latin script.  Just the change of the script here somehow elicited in me an emotional reaction - as the sayings are so very close to Turkish, I felt myself back in a Turkish elementary school with Ataturk's words and portraits.

We come and we go, but national education lives on. I. Gasprinski

School #42, Simferopol

There is a Crimean Tatar Wikipedia, with over 1,000 entries.  It uses the Latin script.

The Latin script used for Crimean Tatar is based on the Turkish alphabet with two additional letters: q and ñ.  These letters represent two sounds that don't exist in Turkish - the hard k (in Cyrillic: къ) and hard n (нъ).  (Interesting side note:  the hard n has a bit of a g sound in it.  On the off chance that you were wondering why the the lake Song in Kyrgyzstan is sometimes transliterated as Son and sometimes as Song, I think this this letter, common to the two languages, is the reason.)

The vast majority of the Crimean Tatar teaching materials I have seen have used Cyrillic.  I wonder how difficult it will be to replace all of the books, signs and teaching materials if and when the switch takes place.  Here is one lesson book that uses the Latin alphabet, which I purchased from the woman who sells books and music at КИПУ.  There is also a Cyrillic version.

Лернинг ту рйд агаин

 Changes from one alphabet to another are difficult even if you know both alphabets.  To explain it in a way I am not qualified to do, when you "learn to read" you are not only learning the process of how letters come together to make sounds, you are training your brain to recognize words and patterns so you don't have to look at each individual letter one by one.  So even a bilingual Russian and English speaker would have a difficult time reading an English text transliterated in Cyrillic.  I somehow "knew" that this was true before, but now I can really understand why.  When I first started studying Crimean Tatar, I was surprised to find that I would often read words that were exactly the same or very close to the same in Turkish but not be able to understand them until I sounded them out.  It is much easier for me to read Crimean Tatar texts in Latin letters because my brain is familiar with many of the words and patterns from Turkish.  And indeed an ability of the Turkic speakers and the Crimean Tatar diaspora in Turkey to be able to easily read Crimean Tatar publications is one large influence in this discussion.  

So what is the future of the Crimean Tatar alphabet?  To close this post with an easy cliché, only time will tell.

Bakhchisaray Lesson plan, take two

There was recently a misunderstanding about a post I wrote regarding a Russian lesson in which my teacher had me find and re-read some sentences of a Russian language version of a Crimean Tatar legend.  While I did not explicitly state it in the post at the time, I considered the information she gave me in that lesson to be quite a narrow and one-sided view of history, and did not personally agree with it.  In the post, I wanted to talk about different views of history and how they retain importance in today's Crimea.  Unfortunately I didn't do a particularly good job of articulating this.  But the reason I said the lesson was interesting was because I learned something about my teacher and her perspectives, not because I was persuaded by that particular reading of history.  I am glad to have a dialogue about this and other posts, and encourage readers to discuss my posts in the comments whether they be in agreement, disagreement, or indifference!

Yes, we have no bananas

Yesterday I was walking through the market and I saw the following sign:


"Russian Blini - You just can't find tastier"

A sucker for good advertising, I was struck with hunger and a very strong blini craving. I ducked inside the cafe, sat down, and ordered blini. Yum...

Imagine my disappointment when I heard the response: "We don't have any blini."

Mapping Crimean Tatar national schools

                                              Thanks, Wikipedia!

In spite of my self-professed love of maps, I only recently mapped out all of the 16 Crimean Tatar national schools on the peninsula.  The map shows something quite interesting - these schools are truly spread throughout the Crimean Peninsula.  Not a single city or village - even Simferopol itself, has more than one of these schools.  Some of them are quite remote, and only a few of them are in larger towns and cities.  On the map below they are highlighted in blue and outlined in black.

There are 16 schools in all, with anywhere from 33 to 403 students.

A few of the schools are in cities (100,000-500,000):
Simferopol, Evpatoria
Larger towns (10,000 - 50,000):
Bakhchisarayi, Sudak, Stari Krim
Smaller towns (2,000+) :
Zuya, Sovietskii, Oktyabrskaye
and villages (less than 2,000):
Viktorovka, Annovka, Vikino, Sari Su, Maiskaye, Zarechnaye, Kolchugino, and Sari Bash.

Two of these villages - Sari-Su and Sari-Bash, were not on either of my maps.

Election winds down. Weekend in Kyiv.

I have this dorky idea that since I was working as an elections observer I shouldn't write much about my feelings regarding the election.  Of course know that no one actually cares what I write about in my personal blog, and given that at the UCCA training meeting one of the individuals on the panel went on an anti-Yanukovich rant, I know UCCA certainly won't be opposed.  Yanukovich will be sworn in on February 25th, and Timoshenko is still promising to challenge the election in the courts.  Certainly I am disappointed that Yanukovich won, but I suppose in terms of politics I'll just keep on posting trivial blips such as interesting campaign ads and leave the political commentary to others.  Who am I to try to make sense of it all?

I was in Kyiv over the weekend for our Fulbright mid-year orientation, and the office organized for us to hear from some Ukrainian analysts their opinions and commentary on the political situation in Ukraine.  We also saw the documentary The Orange Chronicles and had the opportunity to meet the filmmaker.  It was interesting to watch it now, with the Orange fever broken and Yanukovich soon to take over the post of president.  The documentary is a great glimpse at the events and energy of that time - would recommend it to anyone interested in Ukraine, Eurasia or political movements.  

The screening and orientation were also interesting given the number of Fulbrighters who have some tie to Ukraine - many of this year's students and scholars are from the Ukrainian diaspora.  So all though we are mostly a group of Americans sitting around talking about Ukraine, there is a lot going on in these conversations - many of my colleagues have a deep emotional connection to this country.  When we first all met at the orientation in D.C., I was intimidated to join this group, many of which are native Ukrainian speakers and have been following events in the region all their lives.  Now I realize what an opportunity it is to have such these people as my colleagues during my year here.  

In other news, Kyiv is cold and snowy, and I have apparently turned into a winter wimp.

Bakhchisaray's Khan Palace

Edit 20/02/2010:  A few people have misinterpreted this post, thinking that I agreed with or was persuaded by the bias materials my tutor gave me in class, or thinking that I considered these stories research for my project.  Please note that I do not agree with the views of my Russian tutor.  I do not view history the way that she does.  When I wrote out specifically in this blog the things she had me repeat, it was because I wanted to show how she was trying to manipulate my thoughts and views even though she told me she had no problems with my project.  You will see that I then say I had asked her to bring newspaper articles about education.  After this lesson, I began to provide the material for the lessons.  When she asked me to "review" the lesson the following day, I refused.  I do not consider the Russian language legend she gave me research material, I do not agree with it, and it did not change my view of the Crimean Khanate.  My research project in Crimea is separate form my Russian lessons:  I have an advisor at ТНУ and I conduct research in the Gasprinski library.  I have nothing but deep respect for Crimean Tatars, their struggles, history, and great accomplishments.  In the future I will be more careful to articulate my views so there will not be such a misunderstanding.

     A quick visit Monday to the Khan's Palace Museum in Bakhchisaray on the way back home from Sevastopol and election observations.   Speaking of history and memory, the Crimean Khanate and this Palace are also sites of dispute and competing ideas of history and cultural heritage in today's Crimea..

 The Fountain of Bakhchisaray

     My first Russian teacher in Simferopol told me immediately that she did not want to discuss my project (Crimean Tatar language education and revitalization efforts).  She did read a version of the legend of the Fountain of Tears, which can still be seen today in the Khan's Palace in Bakhchisaray.   In the story, the cruel Khan falls in love with a woman taken as a spoil of war.  She dies of heartbreak and homesickness, and he builds a fountain in her memory.  It is a beautiful story, of which there are many versions.  Below is my mug next to the Fountain of Tears in the Bakhshisaray Palace.

     The Fountain of Tears is not only famous for its beauty and legend.  It was immortalized by Pushkin in his poem "The Fountain of Bakhchisaray." It is said that this fountain and reverence for Pushkin's work is what saved Bakhchisaray from a new, improved Soviet name after the Crimean Tatar deportation.  A few people have mentioned to me that Russians left the name "Bakhchisaray" only out of love for Pushkin, so that the poem would retain significance.  I have also heard the idea that the poem saved the Khan's Palace from destruction.

     So this fountain represents a few things.  It represents a legend, a love story.  It represents a time before Crimea was taken into the Russian Empire.  It is a landmark made unforgettable by the beloved Pushkin.  It is loved by Russians, Ukrainians, Crimean Tatars and visitors from around the world, but perhaps for different reasons.  

Zgibnew, a fellow UCCA observer, in front of the Fountain of Tears

What did the Khan do?  How did the Khan rest?

     I eventually got a new teacher, who I was told had no problem with discussing my project.  Today we had an interesting lesson that I think she thought somehow related to my interests.  We also read a Crimean Tatar legend.  In this legend, both the Khan and his son are in love with the same girl, also taken as a spoil of war. The Khan and the son fight over the girl, so the Khan decides that she must die.  They take her to a cliff, and she falls into the Black Sea.  The Khan realizes he cannot live without her, so he also jumps down into the water.  The son becomes the new Khan.

     After we finished reading the story, my teacher had prepared two very specific activities for me.  I was to find the answers to the following questions in the text:  What did the Khan do? and How did the Khan rest?  Of course she had already written out the answers for me, and when I couldn't immediately find them in the text, she pointed them out on a handwritten worksheet that she had made.  

"How did the Khans work?  They waged war.  They went to the Russian lands, they came back with rich spoils and new women.  They left behind them horror, ashes, corpses and blood."

"How did the Khans and murzas rest?  They rested like this.  They enjoyed women, they arranged feasts and celebrations, they played games, they shot Russian peasants in the eye with bows, they drank wine, and they gave glory to Allah, the Prophet Muhammad, and the Khan."

     She made me repeat these sentences until I said them without making a mistake, and tried to get me to recite them from memory.  My homework was to write down these sentences.  The story was 8 pages long, but we only worked on these two paragraphs.

     I find it interesting that both teachers point me to Crimean Tatar legends taking place hundreds of years before the time period of my research interests.  What kind of articles had I requested we read in class?  Newspaper articles about education in Crimea or Ukraine.

The Museum, then and now

     I don't know what to make of this museum.  It certainly is beautiful, and filled with gorgeous artifacts:  books, Korans, embroidery, woodwork.

     There is also a collection of photographs of the area and the museum at various times.  Below is a  photograph of exhibit in the museum sometime in "the 20th century," which is both quite recent and long.  A quote from Lenin is written in Russian and Crimean Tatar:  "Science and culture will become the heritage of the working masses.  It is the only way to win the revolution."  I had some trouble translating it, so a big thank you to Nicholas's roommate Halya.

     I can't help but wonder when in the long 20th century this photograph was taken.  How has this museum changed over the years, with the rise and fall of the Soviet Union, the deportation and return of the Crimean Tatars?  How do Russians, Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars see this place, and the history of the Crimean Khanate as related to today's ethnic tensions?  As my project will bring me back to Bakhchisaray in the near future, I hope to learn more about this museum and get some perspective on these questions.

Ballot breakdown

I promise I'll back off the political posts soon.

Voting results by oblast via Korrespondent:

If you click through to Korrespondent's website you can mouse-over for the voting breakdowns.  Blue here stands for Yanukovich and Red for Timoshenko.  The east-west divide here is obvious and not surprising but the breakdowns tell an interesting story as well.  The oblast with the highest percentage of ballots voting against all candidates was Kyiv, with 8.05%.

Also:  Ukrainia has an even better collection of election ads than my Yulia billboards I posted a few days ago.  It would have been interesting to be in Kyiv this weekend.  Timoshenko's block is saying they are ready to do everything to ensure a third round.

Election day

I had another opportunity to observe in Ukraine's election process, this time for the 2nd round of the presidential vote.  It was definitely worth a second go.  Visiting six polling stations in and around Sevastopol, I met a good number of voters, election workers and local observers and got some nice photographs as well.  I am really glad to be one of many observers to say that the polling stations I visited were poster-children for a high school civics lesson.

A closed city during Soviet times and still home to Russia's Black Sea Fleet, Sevastopol is a sailor's town.  Almost every long time resident from taxi driver to bartender seemed to be a former sailor, or related to one.

If my experience in the first round had me thinking about how much "Russian" Sevastopol is, this second round I got to see a bit more and move past that simple observation.  I heard people talk about their hopes for the future of their country, had a good number of people offer to speak Ukrainian with me in case I preferred (I didn't, but perhaps someday), and saw representatives of both parties working well together in the polling stations.  I was lucky enough to observe with Jim, someone with a lot of life and work experience in Ukraine, and tried to take his lead in engaging the people we met at the polls to show we were there as part of the democratic process instead of an implicit accusation of fraud.  

The result was a long but rewarding day, and lots to think about on my part in terms of Crimea, Ukraine, and (cornball alert) democracy.  See my Picasa album here.

Of course the vote in the end was not surprising - Yanukovich carried Sevastopol by quite a large margin.  The voting breakdown at our final polling station was:

1190 - Yanukovich (82.8%)
164 - Timoshenko (11.5%)
76 - Against all candidates (5.3%)
7 - void

At a national level, Yanukovich has edged out over Timoshenko by a few percentage points. Timoshenko has yet to concede.

But will it work?

With all the campaign advertising for the upcoming presidential campaign, I've been thinking about making a post about campaign advertisements of the various candidates for months.  With the polls opening in less than 24 hours, I suppose it's now or never in terms of writing this.  

The big "SHE"

In this post I'd like to not talk about politics, but show those of you outside Ukraine some of the campaign images that have been appearing non-stop over the past few months.  As Clifford Levy said this week in the NYT, "Just her name - Yulia! - has become shorthand for her stardom."  But it is not even just "Yulia" but also the pronoun "SHE" that is a symbol of this stardom.  From my arrival in Kyiv, I've been captivated by her simple, streamlined and eye-catching campaign ads, which refer to her only as "SHE."  Apparently among her many politicial advisors are AKPD Consulting, who also worked on the simple, streamlined and eye-catching Obama campaign.  She!  Change!  America!  Ukraine!

Why am I not writing about Yanukovich's campaign?  Well, for one, I did a bit yesterday.  And secondly, it was boring.  "Ukraine for the people."  Yawn.

The Timoshenko billboard campaign had a logical progression of simple statements, starting out with small couplets "They talk, she works."  Everyone knew who "she" was, and no one confused it with other female candidates in the first round field of 18.  Then it became "She works.  She is Ukraine!"  (Pushkin Street, Kyiv) You'll excuse me for any Ukrainian mistranslations, please, as I don't study or speak it!

Not surprisingly, this campaign - which looked amazingly fresh and innovative compared to the tired strategies of the other candidates - soon became a butt of many jokes.  

Below see:

- an ad in Russian for window installation, with the words "She Works" in Ukrainian at the top (near my house in Simferopol)

- An add for a computer store saying "They Work" (Pushkin Street, Simferopol)

- A collection of information about Yanukovich and election day, along with a characature of Timoshenko as a gymnast and the caption in Russian:  "What doesn't she do?  She's working!" (Balaclava)

My favorite joke about her campaign wasn't an advertisement but a mystery billboard that appeared in Kyiv: 

I never saw this myself so I stole this picture from another website.  It says "They're crap, she's all that." (It sounds funny in Ukrainian:  Voni kaka, vona tsya tsya)

As the first round got closer, she laid it on a little thicker.

"She is victorious.  She is Ukraine."  (Near my apartment, Simferopol) That cute little red and black design is a traditional Ukrainian pattern.

.

What could be next?  "Ukraine is victorious!"  Here Timoshenko appears on these ads for the first time, with her traditional peasant braid and an armful of wheat.  Two shots from the Kyiv metro:

Ready for something really dramatic?  "Ukraine is victorious.  Ukraine is you!" (Near European Square, Kyiv)

And a shot of one of the ubiquitous candidate tents, this one for Yulia.  Troieshna, Kyiv.

Unfortunately I haven't got a shot of her most recent ads.  For a round-up of TV spots, check this out.

Election day

By Monday morning, at least in theory, Ukraine's people will have chosen a new president.  There are fears that Timoshenko won't accept loss, accusing Yanukovich of fraud and demanding judicial action, or that either candidate could call supporters to the streets following the results.

I certainly hope for the best for the elections, as the people of Ukraine deserve a fair and calm resolution to these tumultuous months of promises, scandals and advertisement overload.  I prefer to take the optimistic view.  For all of the shortcomings of Ukraine's political system, it is important to remember that this young country has come a long way.  As a resident of Crimea was quoted as saying in a recent BBC article:
"We don't know who our president will be after the election...and that's how we're different from Russia...This is a real democratic step."